The present invention relates to a pneumatic tire, more particularly to a tread pattern suitable for winter tire and all season tire capable of improving ice performance, snow performance and drainage in a well balanced manner.
Winter tire is required to have good wet performances on wet roads as well as good performances on icy roads and snowy roads.
It is has been proposed to increase the ground contacting area of the tire tread portion in order to increase the friction of the tire tread portion and also increase the tread pattern rigidity to thereby improve the performances on icy roads. In this technique, however, as the ground contacting area of the tire tread portion is increased, the volume and width of tread grooves are decreased accordingly. Therefore, there is a possibility that the performances on snowy roads such as the shearing force of trodden snow and self-removal of snow as well as performances on wet roads such as drainage are deteriorated.